Seth G. Jones is an academic, political scientist, author, and former senior official in the U.S. Department of Defense. Jones is most renowned for his work on defense strategy, the defense industrial base, irregular warfare, and counterterrrorism. Much of his published work and media interviews are on defense strategy; Chinese, Russian, and Iranian conventional and irregular capabilities and actions; and terrorist and insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. He is currently a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.^[1]

Seth G. Jones is senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, and Director of the International Security Program ^[2] at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.^[3] He also teaches at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies^[4] and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.^[5]

Jones is a Commissioner on the Afghanistan War Commission, a bipartisan commission established by the U.S. Congress to review key decisions related to U.S. military, intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021.^[6] He also served on the 9/11 Review Commission, which was formed by Congress in January 2014 to review the counterterrorism and other recommendations related to the FBI that were proposed by the original 9/11 Commission.^[7]

Prior to joining CSIS, Jones was the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, where he worked from 2003 to 2017. He also served as the representative for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations in 2010 and 2011, and as a plans officer and advisor to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan).^[8]

From 2002-2009, he was also an Adjunct Professor at the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, where he taught classes on "Counterinsurgency" and "Stability Operations."^[9]

Jones is the author of six books: "Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, and the Rise of Irregular Warfare" (W.W. Norton, 2021), "A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland" (W.W. Norton, 2018), "Waging Insurgent Warfare: Lessons from the Vietcong to the Islamic State" (Oxford University Press, 2016), "Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa'ida since 9/11" (W.W. Norton, 2012), "In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan" (W.W. Norton, 2009), and "The Rise of European Security Cooperation" (Cambridge University Press, 2007).^[10] He has published articles on U.S. foreign policy and defense strategy in International Security, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Political Science Quarterly, Security Studies, Chicago Journal of International Law, International Affairs, and Survival, as well as such newspapers and magazines as Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, and Chicago Tribune.

He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1995, with High Honors in Government, Phi Beta Kappa, and Summa Cum Laude.^[11] He received his MA in 1999 and PhD in 2004 from the University of Chicago.^[12]

Jones attracted considerable attention in 2023 for his work on the U.S. defense industrial base.^[13] In a 2023 report titled "Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment: The Challenge to the U.S. Defense Industrial Base," he argued that the U.S. defense industrial base and defense ecosystem were not adequately prepared for an era of great power competition.^[14] In a protracted regional war, such as against China in the Taiwan Strait, the United States would likely run out of critical weapons (such as Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, or LRASMs) in less than a week. Some of the findings were based on a series of CSIS wargames of a Chinese conventional invasion of Taiwan.^[15] Jones also argued that China's defense industrial base is on a wartime footing, while the U.S. industrial base remains largely on a peacetime footing. He noted that China's shipbuilding capacity was more than 230 times as large as the U.S.’s, and that one Chinese shipyard has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined.^[16]

Jones also received significant interest for his work on Russian, Chinese, and Iranian irregular warfare and gray zone activity. His book, "Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, and the Rise of Irregular Warfare," argues that an increasingly important part of great power competition is irregular warfare: cyber attacks, the use of proxy forces, propaganda, espionage, and disinformation.^[17] Before and immediately after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Jones was on CNN virtually every night providing satellite imagery and analysis of Russian military operations.^[18]

In addition, Jones attracted widespread attention for his historical analysis of Afghanistan and Pakistan in his book In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. The book examines the collapse of the Zahir Shah regime, the rise of the anti-Soviet war, the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s, the Taliban take-over of much of the country in the late 1990s, the U.S-led overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, and the subsequent insurgency.^[19]